Rumors that Google feels threatened by the fast-paced rise of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which has built its own UI atop Android and in China also offers its own app store (rather than pre-loading Google Play), were presumably front of mind for Xiaomi VP and former Google employee Hugo Barra today. Read More

As more business moves online, service industry professionals are leveraging new tools to improve how they connect with their customers. To serve those customers, Booker has raised $35 million in new funding to help small- and medium-sized businesses providing services in the offline world to manage customer relationships online. Read More

In one of the craziest sell-offs in Silicon Valley history, PCH International has closed its acquisition of e-commerce site Fab. The deal, which we first reported back in November, was announced today as a stock-and-cash deal for an undisclosed amount.
According to our sources, Fab was selling to PCH for around $15 million. That price is a fire sale for the remaining assets of the company after… Read More

Crowdsourced driving navigation app Waze is getting a boost from parent company Google at this year’s Mobile World Congress – the free app is now included in the section of apps that make up Google Mobile Services, or the pre-installation software bundle Google offers to smartphone and device OEMs building Android gadgets.
The GMS designation means that Waze can join the likes… Read More

Pebble announced Pebble Time last week, the next-generation version of its Pebble smartwatch, and today it’s revealing another new product: Pebble Time Steel. This is the stainless steel version of the Pebble Time, boasting the same interface and software, but in a machined metal case that comes in silver, gold and black finishes, and that also manages to add three days to maximum… Read More

Publishing conglomerates Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are facing tough times this quarter as ebook sales fell and total profit dropped 5.6% at S&S and approximately 12% for RPH. The potential culprits? A lack of blockbuster books and low ebook sales.
While ebooks sales are still dwarfed by paperback and hardback sales, publishers are now seeing even less revenue from… Read More

Finland’s Jolla, the plucky startup that’s built its own mobile OS, called Sailfish, atop the Mer open source project, is showing off its forthcoming, crowdsourced tablet here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’s the follow up to Jolla’s first device, the eponymous Jolla smartphone, which was released at the end of 2013. Read More

Blackberry was once the big dawg in mobile phones. It was in the hands of practically every knowledge worker on the planet, but its days of dominance began a precipitous drop after Apple brought the iPhone to market in 2007 and Android followed in 2008, and today it’s a tiny blip on the smartphone marketshare radar. That’s why it’s interesting that a new company, Silent… Read More

Montblanc, a Swiss luxury company, recently announced a little add-on to its mechanical watch line – the e-Strap, a small OLED system that displays notifications on the bottom of your watch band. I snorted at the concept back in January but now we get to nod sagely at the implementation.
To be clear I don’t think Montblanc is doing anything wrong here. They know smartwatches… Read More

Alibaba Group’s announcement yesterday that it will launch a non-profit NTD $10 billion ($316 million) fund for entrepreneurs in Taiwan was overshadowed by a government investigation into its local operations. During a speech today at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma briefly acknowledged the situation. Read More

If 2014 goes down as the year when smartphone sales globally passed the 1 billion mark (1.2 billion, to be exact, from a total of 1.9 billion mobile phones overall), Q4 will go down as the quarter when Samsung lost its footing as the world’s leader in the category for the first time since 2011. Today, Gartner published its figures for smartphone sales for the year and final quarter… Read More

TrulyMadly is a Tinder-like dating app that has adapted to India’s culture to offer different ways to connect, primarily via a trusted source system that helps give peace of mind when chatting to strangers. Read More

Twitter last week announced plans to begin tracking troublesome users via their mobile phone number. Along those lines, it has begun forcing users of anonymous web browser Tor to provide a number in order to open a new account. Read More

Yep, here’s another card that promises to consolidate all your credit cards into one. But unlike the others, the Stratos Card appears to be worth a longer look. Stratos, the company behind the card, has a novel approach and has seemingly worked through all the niggles so far associated with universal credit cards Read More

For years, Y Combinator has shied away from doing any kind of follow-on funding. That’s out of concern that this would create signaling risk and ward VCs away from supporting startups that don’t get this seal of approval.
However, under the firm’s new leadership with Sam Altman at the helm, it’s possible that Y Combinator will consider doing growth-stage… Read More

From Starcraft to League of Legends, the e-sports market has gone through a massive expansion over the last decade in a half. Millions of dollars are now at stake over video games played in front of audiences of thousands, both at live events and in matches broadcast online.
Y Combinator-backed Kickback is looking to expand the scope of that market by building competitive ecosystems around… Read More

As far as gaming computers go, there are bound to be trade-offs: bigger size means better performance, and more portability is going to naturally lead to compromises when it comes to pure gaming muscle. The Asus Republic of Gamers G751 is a top-tier gaming notebook, but it still falls prey to that essential truth about gaming notebooks, making for an experience that stretches the definition… Read More